ABSTRACT
For two states that were about to embark on over a century of warfare, Rome and Carthage had not only a long relationship, but on the whole a not unfriendly one. In a long digression in his discussion of the causes of the Hannibalic War, Polybios lists three treaties between the two states concluded before the outbreak of the First Punic War. The first of Polybios treaties is dated by him to the consulship of L. Iunius Brutus and M. Horatius, the first consuls after the expulsion of the kings, 28 years before Xerxes invasion of Greece in author's terms, probably, 508/7. The second treaty is not dated by Polybios, but is probably to be equated with the one dated by Livy and Diodoros to 348, though they regarded this as the first treaty. Polybios third treaty is evidently the one Livy dated to 279/8, and was concluded when Rome was engaged in her struggle with Pyrrhus, King of Epirus.
